Breaking a Shin Bone with a Cow's Tongue
Driving home: a soft tongue breaks the bone. Here you got a big old shin bone, you want to make you up some good stock, with the marrow of the shin bone of an old cow that went to the slaughterhouse.
Martin vividly describes trying to break a large cow's shin bone for stock using a piece of a cow's tongue, highlighting the absurdity of the literal action to emphasize the counter-intuitive wisdom of the proverb.
In verse 15, this same chapter, by long forbearing is a ruler persuaded, and here again, this beautiful grotesque imagery, a soft tongue breaks the bone. Here you got a big old shin bone, you want to make you up some good stock, with the marrow of the shin bone of an old cow that went to the slaughterhouse. And I come to your kitchen, and there's that big shin bone, and you want to cut it up into chunks big enough, small enough to get into the pot, and to have the hot water boil out the marrow. And I see you there, with a piece of a cow's tongue, whacking away at the bone.
0:00 - 0:41 Read in full sermon